India's Changing rural scence 1963-1979

Is it correct to assume that the Green Revolution has resulted in the rich getting richer and the poor poorer? Is poverty on the increase, as is often believed? These are the central questions examined in this book.
In 1952 the author visited India for the first time. Since then he has returned several times to carry out field-work in rural areas, spending weeks and months in villages and districts all over the country. This prolonged exposure to the country has enabled him to survey the same areas at intervals of ten to fifteen years, and to provide an authentic account of socio-economic changes. A knowledge of Hindi has facilitated the close observation of India's rural economy which comprises the first part of this study.
In the second part, the author widens the debate to discuss methods of attacking poverty. He relates his field observations to the larger framework of India's economy and its development policies. Making comparative references to China and other Asian countries, he emphasizes the widening gap between the rhetoric of armchair planners and cafeteria revolutionaries, and actual rural life.
What emerges is a complex picture of economic and social change-poverty decreasing in the more progressive areas, limited improvement elsewhere, and increasing destitution in slow-moving districts. From this background emerges the discussion of a possible future in which poverty can be further combated.
This book promises to be controversial, for unlike much of the current literature-which is vastly pessimistic on the subject of rural development and Third World poverty-it is cautiously optimistic.